Austin’s Street Medics Race to Beat the Heat

At a table in Epoch Coffee, Carissa Stephens and Matthew Blaney are working to help Austin’s unhoused population beat the heat. The pair are encouraging coffee shop goers and passersby to take a warm-weather first aid kit to distribute to someone in need. One man stops on his way out, no doubt drawn in by the neon pink T-shirts and cardboard boxes. He eagerly grabs six first aid kits, a whole box. For him and many around Austin, supporting an unhoused neighbor with socks, snacks, and sunscreen is a no-brainer.

The hot pink tees belong to Street Medics Austin, a mutual aid nonprofit that works to prepare, educate, and support people in the community who may be underserved by traditional emergency services. 

As summers get hotter and the city continues to sweep and disband homeless camps, more unhoused folks are facing extreme heat and weather risks. In Texas, days with extremely hot temperatures have tripled in the last 50 years. For Austin’s unhoused population, these extreme temperatures can be all the more damaging, as resources that can help alleviate the conditions are harder to come by.

Austin-Travis County EMS is feeling the burn, responding to almost double the volume of heat-related calls as in July last year. An already strained EMS is struggling to meet the needs of the community, and the first aid needs of unhoused folks are not always adequately satisfied. 

The Street Medics formed in summer 2020 to provide first aid care at Black Lives Matter protests, stepping in after protesters faced a series of violent interactions with APD. Beyond direct response at demonstrations, the Street Medics take steps to prepare the community for disasters such as extreme weather events. 

To Blaney, the organization’s executive director, disaster preparedness can mean a lot of things. “CPR works in any disaster; Stop the Bleed works in any disaster. It could be high winds that knock a tree branch down, and you get an injury, or knock a power line down, and you get an electric shock,” he said. “The truth is that the more people that know how to save a life in an emergency, the better we are and the stronger we are as a community.” 

The group is made up of between 50 and 70 volunteers, many of them young University of Texas students. Some have medical training; others just want to help where they can. Stephens, who heads the unhoused outreach team, has been a pediatric charge nurse for decades. Blaney, on the other hand, has no formal medical training. Stephens said that many of the volunteers work at different groups across the city. “They are just doing it because they want to be helpers,” she said. 

The Street Medics’ unhoused outreach is centered around the distribution of first aid kits at homeless camps, cooling centers, and out of car windows to Austin’s unhoused neighbors. This past summer, the Street Medics distributed 733 kits to the community, more than double the total amount of kits they produced in 2023. 

On top of the standard first aid materials, the kits also include things like bandanas, sunglasses, hair elastics, and sunscreen. Blaney said that community input has been really important in making the packages. When they distribute kits, or if they are providing first aid at a camp, volunteers ask the unhoused folks what they want and need.

 “A lot of camps will have like one person in the camp that is just, like, the camp doctor, and oftentimes we’ll work with them directly,” Blaney said. The Street Medics have thought of just about everything: snacks that are easy to eat without teeth, soothing lotion for sunburned skin, and clean, dry socks. Included in the kits are double doses of opioid overdose treatment naloxone, or Narcan, meaning more than 1,400 doses of the lifesaving drug will be distributed throughout the community.  

The preparation doesn’t stop there, though. Street Medics hosts free training for the public in first aid, Stop the Bleed, Narcan administration, CPR, and more. The Street Medics host sessions at churches, community centers, and libraries – places they know are accessible and get a lot of foot traffic. Because the training is free, they hope to remove barriers to learning lifesaving skills. “If folks want to learn how to save someone’s life using CPR, they should,” Blaney said. “An amazing way to strengthen our community is to teach people how to look after each other.”

For Blaney, helping folks prepare for emergencies is integral to strengthening the community. And, he said, it helps people feel better. “I don’t know if it’s an Austin thing or just a human thing, but I think people need something good in their lives,” the executive director said. “And one thing you can do to make yourself feel better is make a gesture to improve someone else’s life.”

“You can drive around Austin and pass kits out through your car window,” Blaney continued, “and that’s like the best mutual aid, community support, feel-good thing you can do – genuinely helping someone else and helping yourself feel like a part of the solution.”

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